Chicken to your door the next front in fast food fight

KFC Australia will trial home delivery next month, as the chicken frying giant tries to keep pace with the rapidly changing fast food market

KFC Australia will trial home delivery next month, as the chicken frying giant tries to keep pace with the rapidly changing fast food market.

Direct competitor Red Rooster has been offering home delivery for 2½ years and says the move is behind much of the growth that has its parent company set for a $250 million stockmarket float.

Photo: iStock

And online food delivery aggregators such as MenuLog and UberEATS – which provide a shared order platform and their own drivers – have made it cheaper and easier for smaller restaurants to deliver their food to customers.

KFC Australia's managing director Nikki Lawson said a home delivery trial would start out of eight of the chain's outlets within the next three weeks.

Foodora – an aggregator which runs a delivery network using bicycles, motorbikes and cars – will deliver the orders.

"We'll be going fairly carefully," Mrs Lawson said. "What you don't want to do is have a fabulous delivery experience and end up with a really awful consumer experience for everyone else."

Customer demand, the effect on service for in-store customers, and being able to deliver a quality product would determine whether home delivery would be rolled out Australia-wide, Mrs Lawson said.

“It’s the next logical step on convenience.” she said. “As soon as we see a viable business case we’ll roll it out a little more aggressively.”

She said KFC’s own “click and collect” online order system could be adapted to home deliveries, but there were no plans to use its own drivers.